Spirited Spring Greens

Talking of survivors, I thought I’d give an honourable mention to some resilient spring greens I sowed in pots for overwintering a few weeks ago.

They got munched by the countless slugs that my garden provides a haven for when it chucks it down with rain. I should have covered them up, but it was one of those jobs that I never quite got around to doing.

Lazily, I put them up on our garden table instead. I’ll never quite understand how a slug manages to crawl up on to a table, but plenty of them did. If something so small can climb something so high, all you can really do is stand back and say fair play to slugs.

I discarded the stalks that were left in my little coldframe to get the plants out of the way. Just like my aubergine, I forgot about them and got on with nicking some replacements from Jan’s greenhouse.

Yet these little seedlings battled back. The plants have new leaves and now the slugs are gone, they’re close to planting out size.

I’ve got a whole row down the plot already, but these brave, plucky souls deserve another chance.

As part of my newly-found fascination with confined space growing, I’m going to pop them in to bigger pots and see what happens.

If they’re as tough later in life as they were in their infancy, I’ll be munching on pot grown greens in no time at all.

Allotment Cakes for the Weekend

Saving £500 a year!

During 2011, I kept a diary of how much money I save from growing my own fruit and vegetables.
After totalling all my outgoings, I saved approximately £500 over the year.
I made a spreadsheet to calculate these savings - it’s nothing too complicated, as I’m no Excel guru, but hopefully someone else will find it as useful (and strangely fun) as me.
For more info, visit my Money Saving Experiment page by clicking here.